Music To Their Ears

`Mr. Holland's Opus' Rings True To Chicago-area Band, Chorus Teachers

February 28, 1996|By Richard Rothschild, Tribune Staff Writer.

In the third-floor music room at Marshall Metro High School on Chicago's West Side, the sounds of the future fill the air as students tinker with electronic keyboards and compose their own works on computers.

As he walks around the class, Delano O'Banion corrects some of his students' wayward fingering. A former choir director and band instructor, he tells a visitor about the importance of the computer music class, which he began teaching in 1989.

"Computers are it," says O'Banion, who has taught at Marshall since 1963. "I love live music but if you don't get into this stuff (computer music), you're finished. This is the 21st Century. The rest of the world is catching up to the music industry in terms of computers."

Rare is the O'Banion student who begins his class with any previous music experience. The Chicago public schools stopped offering music in the elementary grades years ago.

But judging by the way students mix rap and Beethoven using their computer programs, music has become an important part of their lives.

"It is a valuable class," O'Banion says. "I started this with the attitude that this is a grabber, this is the bait. And we've had very high attendance. Music is changing, but the kids are interested in the whole new technology."

O'Banion's foresight, diligence and ability to motivate students over a 35-year teaching career bring to mind the year's most famous music teacher, Glenn Holland, the energetic high school instructor portrayed by Richard Dreyfuss in the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus."

The movie chronicles Holland's 30-year teaching career: his early desire to be a composer; the challenge of motivating students who are not musically gifted; his conflict with balancing a professional life with family responsibilities; and his retirement, forced by budget cuts.

The Holland-like enthusiasm that O'Banion brings to his job did not go unnoticed. Last month the Chicago chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences presented O'Banion with its Mr. Holland's Opus Award in a ceremony at Piper's Alley that featured a preview of the movie.

The academy considered the movie the perfect vehicle for setting up the award and honoring teachers like Delano O'Banion. The award was presented to music teachers in 50 other cities around the nation.

"We were looking for someone who had been teaching music education for 25-plus years and had developed a certain reputation," says Hy Kloc, executive director of the Chicago chapter. "O'Banion's credentials pushed him way out in front in people's eyes. He met all the criteria and then some."

O'Banion says "Mr. Holland's Opus," which earned Dreyfuss an Academy Award nomination for best actor, strikes a number of personal chords.

"I related to that movie a lot," he says during a break from his general music survey class. "Especially when his wife said, `You care more for other people's children than you do your own.' It was all I could do to keep from shedding a tear.

"But it's my job. I did give a lot of time to other people's children. I'm a teacher, a servant of the people trying to do a job. I've done that all my life. The kids keep you moving."

Familiar territory

There are many Mr. Holland stories around Chicago, and many teachers in a special position to comment on how truthfully the movie told its story.

Some note that Dreyfuss' character shouldn't conduct with the baton in his left hand because even left-handed conductors are taught to hold it in their right, and that no high school orchestra sounds as polished as the Seattle Symphony or London Metropolitan Orchestra (which were used for the soundtrack). But Holland's motivational techniques, his struggles for a normal home life and his relationship with students are true to life, they say.

Early in the movie, Holland tells his wife he'll teach for only four years so that he'll have enough money to devote to composing full time. Four years turns into three decades.

"When I started out, it was just a job, a paycheck, a way to support yourself," says Marjene Pappas, director of bands for the Oswego schools and one of the area's few women in an instrumental leadership post. "Now I can't get out of it. It's a career and it's important to me."

"It's a really wonderful movie," says Pappas, who was not allowed to join the University of Illinois marching band in the 1960s because it did not allow females. "Someone has drawn attention to the lack of concern about arts in our country because it needs to be addressed."

Holland's time away from his family, which is demanded by show rehearsals and individual instruction, hits home with John DeGroot, a choral director at Waubonsie Valley High School in Aurora, who has taught music for 23 years. He is busy preparing for the school's production of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," and in March will take 175 students to New Jersey to perform at the North American Music Festival.